Posts Tagged ‘bloggers’

Four Flip cameras to give away

Posted by Gavin Wray on 4th May 2011
Closeup of Flip camera in a person's hand

Photo by Podnosh

Over the last six months Podnosh have trained several groups of people in social reporting – using video, audio and other social media to objectively report what’s happening in communities, at events or meetings and to quickly publish this information on the web.

If you’ve been part of the training – through Every Voice Counts, the Black Country Take Part Pathfinder program or with Birmingham Neighbourhood Forums – then we’ve sent you an email.

It’s offering you the chance to win one of four Flip cameras bought as part of the Every Voice Counts programme. The aim of the training and these cameras was to create a legacy of community groups, active citizens and even council officers empowered to use the web for civic good.

So if you received one of these emails please write a social blog post whereever you think is fit and link your post to this one. We’ll read the posts and pass on the cameras to four groups or people.

What do we mean by “social”? Need some ideas on what to write about? You might want to look at:

The closing date is Friday 20th May 2011. Remember to include a link to this post.

Good luck and we look forward to reading your posts. Everyone will get mentioned here once the decision has been made (the posts will be judged by Nick Booth, owner of Podnosh and Denise Taylor from RAWM) – and we’ll explain why we chose the posts we did.

So four Flip cameras to help you hold power to account or reflect what going on in your neighbourhood or your community.

Posted on 4th May 2011 by
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Posted in Active Citizenship, Engaged citizens | 7 Comments »

Using social media tools for community empowerment

Posted by Simon Harper on 10th February 2011

The Every Voice Counts project has been about identifying and sharing resources which help communities to empower themselves. One of the ways which people can do this is by using social media to start conversations about what’s happening in their community and to share ideas about action they can take to enhance the area where they live. Many people are setting up hyperlocal blogs and pages on social networks to talk about the local issues which are affecting them – it could be about a city or about a single street.

There are lots of ways that you can do this, and they’re very simple to set up. Here is a short guide to some of the social media tools which you can use to have conversations with other local people about the issues which interest you, and to build relationships with other people as a way of sharing thoughts and ideas for action you can take. There are also organisations like Podnosh, Talk About Local and Journal Local which offer support to and work with hyperlocal blogs to help them communicate more effectively. (more…)

Posted on 10th February 2011 by
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Posted in Resource | No Comments »

Blogging success stories: how the bloggers we trained used the site

Posted by Simon Harper on 26th January 2011

We trained a number of people from the public sector to use this blog as a way of talking about their work so that they could see the advantages of using social media to engage and communicate with citizens, and also the benefits of introducing greater transparency to their work.

The people we trained have used the blog in different ways and to talk about very different things. Some of them have blogged about events they’ve been to, for example this post from Karen Cheney:

I went to the Birmingham Young Resident University Presentation Evening at Lakeside Centre, Aston University last Friday evening 26/11/10. A fantastic event – the presentations from young people were of the highest quality and all thought provoking.

Congratulations to all involved – Syconium, Lift Community Trust, First Class Youth Network, Erdington Constituency Children’s Forum and Learning Curve plus Chamberlain Forum who have co-ordinated the project. (more…)

Posted on 26th January 2011 by
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Posted in Active Citizenship, Asset Transfer, Co-Production, Engaged citizens, Sharing Effective Practice | No Comments »